


America's Samson

by altalemur, CreativeNameHere



Category: Marvel
Genre: Native!Steve Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7267657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altalemur/pseuds/altalemur, https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativeNameHere/pseuds/CreativeNameHere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by <a href="http://reythespacebae.tumblr.com/post/145475245831/kingkaijuice-acceber74-aquilaofarkham">this post</a> and the gratuitous discussion thereof had with altalemur. (They are AWESOME) Native!Steve Rogers with luscious flowing locks and serious haircare cred, up here giving zero fucks about anyone who insists on unnecessarily gendering hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In Steve’s earliest memory, he is sitting on the floor, head tipped back between his mother’s knees as she brushes out his hair, humming a harvest song as she dabs tallow on his scalp and brushes and brushes and eventually he tips his head forward and she braids his hair tight-tight at the base of his skull. In his memory, it seems like she braids forever, but he knows he was a sick little kid who never got enough to eat and his hair was always breaking like strands of cornsilk. When she finally ties off the end of the braid, he just sits there, basking in her presence and the warm hands stroking gently from his temples to his braid. The gentle slide of her humming fades away.

It’s his earliest memory, and it always leaves him shivering because it’s his only memory of his mother before she got sick. After that, he remembers in bits and pieces the bitter cold winter that came and brought a cough that never seemed to leave her, until finally she was bundled away to the New York City Municipal Sanitorium for Tuberculosis because it was the only place that would take her that spring.

Eventually, he found his way to a crammed tenement in Brooklyn where no one cared if he was Tuscarora and five years younger than he said he was, as long as he kept his hair tucked up and paid his rent on time. If the subways and trolleys ran on time and he didn’t get winded walking, it only took him two hours to get to the sanitorium and sit for a time with his mother, on alternating Sundays, and whenever he resented a minute of it he made himself remember how much worse it would be, if he’d been shipped off to that awful Thomas School near Niagara.

On the tenth Sunday after he moves to Brooklyn, she smiles serenely as he hums her harvest song and brushes out her hair. The sanitorium won’t allow her any tallow, but the motions are mostly the same. Her hair is raven-dark against her ashen skin, and he tries to be gentle as he makes two loose plaits that frame her face and trail onto the blanket over her rattling ribcage. He finishes, and the smile she gives him is like the sun, as bright and warm as that earliest memory. She falls asleep with the smile still caught on her lips, to the feeling of his hands, too large for his slight frame but deft and warm, stroking gently from her temples to her braids. Her hair is still braided when she dies the next week.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve deals with getting shit for his long hair and makes a new friend. TW: racism, homophobia, and implied transphobia.

After five years living in a crummy apartment within stinking distance of the Gowanus, Steve Rogers had learned some things, most of them about when and how to blend in. Now an Indian kid in Brooklyn stuck out like a sore thumb, but if he got closer to a certain set of bars, suddenly he wasn’t so obvious. A skinny kid all of five foot nothing with some weird hair paled in comparison to a gaggle of debs, dressed to the nines, with pearls just brushing their adam’s apples.  
  
When the WPA had work, he did most of it holed up in Mr. Kemper’s mostly empty equipment shed on the roof, and the pigeons didn’t care how he looked. But when he had to clerk for Russo’s cannery in between, he couldn’t just braid it. Russo paid good, but he never held back his opinions on “those damned pansies,” who were, in his mind, the sole parties responsible for the crash, vagrancy, filtered cigarettes and all other “moral degenerations.” Steve kept his head down and did his work, with his braid stuffed under a cap.

It worked well, for a time, until some drunk in the wrong neighborhood decided he wanted a fight, and that Steve looked as good an opponent as any, trucking home from an art class with a portfolio almost as big as he was, charcoal smudged everywhere and his braid still shining down his back.

“Hey! Hey, chief!”

Steve tried not to respond, but he couldn’t help the stiffening of his spine, and that was enough for the drunk.

“Yeah, you! You a queer, or you just wanna be a squaw?”

Steve set his jaw and willed his feet to continue forward. People were starting to stare. Having the drunk’s attention was bad enough, but he didn’t want theirs, too.

“Where you think you’re doing, Chief Suck-a-Cock? Hey! I’m talkin’ ta you—“

Steve couldn’t help turning when the drunk’s voice suddenly cut off. The potbellied dockworker was scrambling for purchase as a statuesque woman in a dapper suit towered over him, lifting him by his meaty throat.

“Leave the kid alone. Don’t make me teach you manners, ‘cause I ain’t your momma.” His face was purple and terrified as she lifted him clear off the ground and abruptly dropped him to his feet, where he stumbled into the gutter and staggered back up again. “Now run along home, little man.” When he gawped at her, rubbing his neck, she bared her teeth and lunged. Her sharp movement was all the incentive needed, and in a blink he was gone.

Steve had a similarly struck expression, but when she turned to face him she just rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Are you all right there, boy?”

He blinked owlishly and then “Uh, yes, ma’am – sir? – ma’am?” Considering that the drunk had nearly a head on him at she had a head on the drunk, he was extremely worried what she might do to him. With his asthma, being picked up by the throat would most certainly not end well.

Luckily for Steve, she took a long look at him and then began to laugh, a great roar of a sound. “Ma’am’ll do nicely, my fellow, but my friends call me Billie. Come on, I don’t bite, so let’s have your name.”

And that was how Steve Rogers came to be fast friends with Billie Barnes, king of the gay old girls of Brooklyn, and eventually her cousin Bucky as well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve learns how to hide long hair in plain sight from the best of them.

Eventually there came a day where, on his way out the door, Russo’s old lady let him know that the next time he clerked for them, he’d have to leave his cap at the door. “You’re still a good clerk,” she drawled, “But you’re too old to wear your hat indoors.” She glanced around, making sure they were alone, and leaned in conspiratorially, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but he’s looking for reasons to send people packing. You’re a good kid, Stevie, so don’t give him any reasons make it you. Lose the hat.”  
“That’s a bind for sure,” Buck nodded over their dime coffees at the automat. Steve was sipping his slowly, trying not to wallow and hoping it wasn’t his last coffee for a while. If it came down to it, he could probably stretch his asthma cigarettes and other medications a little longer than he ought, but coffee would be the first luxury to go. He’d already gotten used to taking it black, no sugar, to save those precious pennies.  
“So whaddya got, you got hair as long as my arm and a dip of a boss who’ll can you given half a chance. You can’t cut your hair, but you can’t look like a poof neither.” Bucky downed the last of his coffee in one swig. “Well, punk, you’re in luck. Come on.”  
\--  
Billie wasn’t at all surprised at the request. “Honestly, I’m shocked it took you this long to ask.” She was in her spare little apartment, getting ready for a Friday night with her best gal, showing Steve how she did up her hair. He’d never seen her with it down before, and it was at least as long as his was, and wild with curls besides.  
“Tools first,” she said sternly, “any comb or brush will do, but I only ever use Brill cream. May I?” Without truly waiting for a response, she tugged a lock of his hair between her fingers. “Hm, as I thought, you’ll probably need quite a few more hairpins. Now, watch what I do, and then we’ll do yours.”  
Steve sat behind her and to the right, mimicking as she went. Creating sections was familiar, but coiling locks of hair around and around until he could pin it flat to his head was not. Billie caught his eye in the mirror, and told him “These are called pin curls. I like to do mine in a pattern so as it makes a fine wave when I let it down, but unless you want ringlets of your own you don’t need to pattern them. Just make them fit, tight as you can get ‘em.” Steve nodded, and the newest one sprung loose from his head. “Don’t worry,” she reassured him, “It gets easier with practice, just like braiding it.”  
She tidily finished up her own hair and started guiding him through doing his own. She showed him how to coil sections tight against his scalp, and how to sweep the loose strands over them to cover his work, with her Brill cream to hold it all together. When she had finished, his hair looked like any other office clerk’s, though maybe a touch overdue for a trim. It held wonderfully through a night on the town, until a tipsy Bucky patted Steve’s head heavily and a large section flopped uselessly out of place. It was useful, however, in spurring a great gale of laughter from both the Barneses, which was only exacerbated by Steve’s consternation.  
\--  
The next time Steve clerked for Russo, the fat old man was already in his office and his cups by start of day. Clenching the stub of a cigar in a hard-set mouth, he crowded his own doorway to bellow “Rogers!” like it was a battle cry. Steve put down his pencil, straightened his tie, and trotted into the big office.  
“Yes, sir?” he asked, keeping his big brown eyes wide and guileless under his false 3-5 part.  
Russo released his cigar into the custody of an ashtray and turned to Steve, his mouth open as if to speak, but when he looked at his employee his jaw slackened around air instead of words. Steve just looked at him expectantly.  
“Uh… good work, Rogers. Good work. I’ll need you Thursday as well, so you know.”  
“Thank you, sir. Is there anything else?”  
Russo shook his head dumbly and waved him off, and that was the last of that. At his next chance, Steve dug up a heavy piece of creamy white cardstock and on it painted a pretty little goldfinch for Mrs. Russo, with the words “thank you” in neat, light pencil on the back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Native!Steve Rogers tells Dr. Erskine what he thinks about bullies.

When Pearl Harbor happens, Steve grits his teeth and fully prepares himself to lose his hair when he enlists. He buys himself a sharp pair of shears and plans to braid it, long and straight like Sarah taught him, and cut it off himself before he leaves. He wants to be able to keep that link to her safe, instead of losing it in a jumble on a barracks floor with all the others.  
  
But then he gets a 4-F. And then another. He’s too short. Too Indian. Too nearsighted. Too asthmatic. Too skinny. He gets the smart idea to dunk his hidden-up hair in water and add a few pounds. It winds up being a stupid idea that makes him catch cold, and gets him another 4-F and a week and a half in bed, coughing like his lungs are gonna make a run for it. Once he’s recovered, he starts back. This time, with a sense of urgency. Bucky’s joined up, and he’ll be shipping out soon. Billie had signed on with the WAACs the same day they formed, and was gleefully wearing her uniform with the slacks all over, just daring someone to say something. Steve wrenched a little at the thought of his friends putting their lives on the line while he – what? Stayed home and drew up more posters for the WPA urging everyone to Do Your Part?  
  
So when Dr. Erskine lets him know the jig is up, but doesn’t force him out, asks him questions instead, Steve decides to double down and tell the whole truth.  
  
“Well, Doc,” he starts, heart hammering in his chest as he starts to unpin and unwind his hair, hoping to hell he can trust his gut, “I don’t like bullies.” Erskine’s confused expression turns to surprise when the first long lock slips free, and then his eyes narrow in sharp appraisal as Steve continues.  
  
“And I know bullies. It doesn’t matter where they come from, or why they choose to pick on someone else. Might be they wanted my people’s land. Might be some bigot doesn’t like seeing my Indian face where he thinks a white one oughta be. Might be some angry little man who thinks he should be king of everything just ‘cause other angry little men like how he lays blame for their problems. It doesn’t matter. They’re all bullies. And the only way anyone ever stopped a bully was standing up to them. That’s what I want to join for. No more, no less.”  
  
Erskine accepts him into the program, and the knot in Steve’s gut unwinds itself, just for a moment.


End file.
